Thursday, May 24, 2012

Other Artists


Via Axis contemporary art website, following OCA video of Sheila MacGregor:I love this sculptural textile piece by Marilyn Rathbone ‘100 metres dash’. She hand braided the silk which looks like a shoe lace and has dashes all along its 100 metre length. The reel and label make me feel nostalgic for haberdashery stores (although the length would have been in yards). I can almost feel the patience of the task wound onto that reel but despite the measurements given I can’t really get my head around the scale. http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=12675


William Heath Robinson 1872-1944
To be honest I had no idea that the term ‘Heath Robinson’ in respect to inefficient or ludicrous contraptions was actually the name of an illustrator (or four illustrators if you count Will’s father, a wood engraver, and his two older brothers) who drew such machines.

I’ve found his biography (by James Hamilton, Pavilion Books), in the house I’m staying in, and am impressed and enchanted more by his drawing skills and the range of his style than by his humour. Interesting to read how he was put off his original dream of being a landscape painter by a dismissive art dealer and how his utter determination to be a successful illustrator paid off in the end.

Also interesting to see how his early pen and ink illustrations were influenced by woodcut techniques
eg The Arabian Nights Entertainments 1899 


And how they then were influenced by Aubrey Beardsley

eg The Night’s Plutonian shore 1900 Poe Poems


His use of watercolour with pen and without is exquisite

eg In ‘Follow after- we are waiting by the trails that we lost’ from A Song of the English from 1909


he uses a similarly muted palette to ‘Blasting Limpets on the Barbary Coast’ 1906

but the tone is totally different. The former being sad and ethereal and the latter comical.

I love the detail and the muted palette in ‘Farmyard and Barns’ painted in the1920’s.
Shown at 4:11 of this lovely little film about him at http://wn.com/William_Heath




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